Paris Summer Food Games: An artichoke vinaigrette puts France at your fingertips

By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is one in a series of articles about dishes suited to watching and celebrating the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.]

The French aren’t famous for eating with their fingers, but their approach to artichokes is a notable exception. Pull a leave off, dip the base in sauce (if the sauce is served on the side), scrape the base with your teeth and eat — that’s as French as it is American.

And because artichauts à la vinaigrette can be made ahead, chilled and then eaten cold (with your fingers!), they’re perfect for so many summer endeavors, from picnics and potlucks to having friends for drinks and apps, to snacking in front of the TV during the Paris Summer Olympics.

Our recipe has you pour the vinaigrette over the artichokes while they’re warm, but you could just as easily chill the boiled artichokes unadorned, and serve the vinaigrette separately, for dipping.

Need a quick primer on how to trim them for cooking? Find it in this article. And here’s the recipe:

RECIPE: Artichokes Vinaigrette

---

MORE FROM THIS SERIES

READ: “Paris Summer Food Games: Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse”

READ: “Paris Summer Food Games: A Quintessential Quiche Lorraine always grabs the gold”

READ: “Leeks ravigote, trending in France, belongs on your TV table this Olympic summer”

---

Want a free or paid subscription to Cooks Without Borders’ Webby Award-winning newsletter, with recipes delivered to your inbox? Sign up below!

Tangy, umami-ful and infinitely riffable, this cabbage salad (vegan or not!) hits all the right notes

By Leslie Brenner

Cabbage, as the New York Times proclaimed in a story in March, has become the “darling of the culinary world.” At restaurants around the country, you can find it charred, sauced, braised, stuffed with ’nduja, set on taleggio fondue, drizzled with tahini, basted with kelp butter, filled with smoked fish.

To me, a head of cabbage in the fridge — whether Napa, or red or standard green — is a cruciferous insurance policy that’s particularly valuable in the summer. Unlike ephemeral lettuce, which wilts if you look at it sideways, cabbage is always there for you, cooking not required.

Cabbage salads are wonderful for so many reasons. To begin with, they’re substantial enough to be a standalone lunch. They also take well to getting dressed up — and they hold their dressing really well without sogging out.

Of course you could make a perfectly serviceable cole slaw, but why not live a little, and really take that cabbage to town?

Recently my family has flipped over a cabbage salad dreamt up by my son Wylie. The idea at the heart of it is a tangy dressing based on lime juice and miso, with sesame oil, a little heat from gochujang and plenty of shredded fresh ginger. Toss that with a lot of shredded cabbage — of any kind (Napa, green cabbage, red cabbage), along with with sliced celery, red bell pepper and fresh herbs, whether cilantro or Italian parsley, plus scallions or red onion.

We usually include some kind of protein — usually tuna, tofu or chicken — and enjoy it as lunch-in-a-bowl. Or skip the protein, and call it a side dish.

It’s infinitely adaptable! Feel like finishing it with sesame seeds? That adds pizzazz. Or maybe you want a little more crunch: Go for chopped toasted cashews. You can’t go wrong.

Looking for something fresh to bring to a picnic or potluck? This travels well, and its gorgeous colors make it the life of the party.

Red Napa cabbage

Designing the salad

Your choice of cabbage determines the texture, look and crunch. If you’d like it green with lovely texture, use Napa cabbage. Regular green cabbage, a little sturdier, offers more crunch. You might use a combo of Napa and red cabbage. Or entirely red cabbage — that works, too. One day I found some gorgeous organic red Napa cabbage — it was brilliant in this.

Wylie’s Convertible Salad, made with Napa cabbage, red cabbage and tuna, finished with nigella seeds and toasted sesame seeds

Protein-wise, there are many ways to go. The first time Wylie made the salad, he included a can of flaked tuna. Salmon would work too — whether it’s leftover from dinner, or you open a can. Or sardines!

As its inspiration was California-style Chinese chicken salad, it’s particularly appealing with shredded chicken. Harbor a head of cabbage in your crisper, and whenever you find yourself with leftover rotisserie chicken — or any leftover cooked chicken — you’ve got a great match.

Lately I’m loving it with tofu, as I often want a satisfying vegan lunch. Pressed tofu — also a great thing to keep in the fridge — is super nice in it, cut into strips. For a different mood, extra-firm tofu adds nice softness, and those little pillows pick up the dressing so nicely.

The salad, made with extra-firm tofu, red cabbage and scallions, and finished with cashews

Ready, set, slice

Yes, there’s quite a bit of slicing involved. Look at it as a great opportunity to practice your knife skills. Or maybe you have a mandoline? Grab that cabbage and slice away — you’ll be through it in a flash (watch your fingers!).

RECIPE: Wylie’s Convertible Cabbage Salad

May many of your salad days be cabbage days.

---

Want a free or paid subscription to Cooks Without Borders Webby Award-winning newsletter, with recipes delivered to your inbox? Sign up below!

A love letter to vospov kofte: How my mother and I quashed our beef and swapped it with lentils

By Varty Yahjian

[Editor’s note: We loved this essay, originally published in March, 2021. Because it celebrates a dish that’s traditionally eaten during Lent, it feels like a great time to bring it back.]

My mother and I see eye to eye on exactly three things: inappropriate humor, dangly earrings and eating with our hands. (Vehement approval!) Oh, and we both sleep in on the weekends and cancel plans before noon.

Aside from these, it’s hard to find common ground between us, and we widen that distance in the kitchen. There, we disagree about it all. She doesn’t salt food while it cooks, while I think it’s a mistake to wait till the end; I like caramelizing onions, while she thinks it's a waste of time.

We do, however, have a common food heritage, one that spans the 36 years between us: We both grew up eating food native to the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

Our family tree is ethnically Armenian, but for the three generations preceding me, we have had Bulgarian nationality. In the early twentieth century, my paternal great-grandparents escaped ethnic cleansing in Anatolia and settled in Sofia, Bulgaria — where my father was born, and where my parents would eventually meet in the 1970s. My mother’s great-great-grandparents left Anatolia for the same reason even earlier, sticking to the Black Sea’s coast following their voyages as refugees. 

The result of these migrations is our family’s tradition, a fabulous mix of Armenian, Bulgarian, and now with me, American sensibilities. 

Gayane (left) and Varty Yahjian, making vospov kofte / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

As with most immigrant families, my mother is the sovereign of the stove. To her it’s an indisputable reign, making for a tumultuous dinnertime environment because over the years, I’ve relied less on her recipes as I create my own. For instance, I use stewed tomatoes and a lot of dill in our flu-season chicken soup in lieu of her usual celery and bell peppers. Like a true monarch, she loathes these types of rebellions, vexedly announcing “I’m sorry, but no, this is not how you do it!” before storming off. 

When we were all younger, my mother fed the whole family, of course. I don’t know how she did it, because after working a ten-hour workday and pulling dinner together, she had to deal with my ruthlessly picky palate.  

Until I was in middle school, I rarely ate anything that wasn’t potatoes, rice or macaroni. Mushrooms were smelly and pretended to be meat; buckwheat tasted like aluminum foil (yes, I said that exactly); and romaine lettuce, my final boss of hated foods, was unbearably bitter. 

Regardless of protest, my mom always made sure my plate left the table clean; if not, “mekhké” — it’s a shame, as she would say — because those last few bites were my good luck charms.

Thankfully my tastebuds evolved in tweendom. Perhaps it was the feeling of unsupervised freedom after being dropped off at the mall that led me towards the food court’s salmon nigiri and fried chicken with waffles. 

Or maybe my budding womanhood began to recognize how incredible it was that my mother managed to feed us every single night. I owed it to her to honor her food, especially because at this point, she was also working on the weekends. Looking back, I see that my mother’s cooking was a love-language, and I understand now why she’d get so upset when I brought back full Tupperwares of food from school.

But part of my coming around could also just be that at some point, I saw how unbelievably lame it was to be so stubborn about food. 

Photo by Varty Yahjian

In seventh grade I started watching Food Network, and my mother took note. Encouraging my growing curiosity, she bought me a copy of Cooking Rocks!: Rachael Ray 30-Minute Meals for Kids, and in her typical compliment-and-command delivery, inscribed on the first page “To my cute Varty to cook some meals!” 

And cook some meals I did, starting with Ray’s Tomato, Basil and Cheese Baked Pasta recipe, which I’ve since memorized and still make, with some grown-up additions. My parents loved it, and I was immediately validated — a powerful feeling for anyone, and especially a Green Day-listening, greasy-haired thirteen-year-old.

In high school, armed with my new driver's license in our family's Volvo wagon, I began tearing through Los Angeles' incredible culinary jungle — thrilled by the star anise and coriander at our local pho shop and tacos de lengua in Cypress Park. 

At home, I started carefully watching my mother because those smells of toasted butter, tomato sauce, and allspice had begun to signal more than just “dinner’s ready.” They were re-introducing me to flavors of my heritage — a connection to my great-grandparents I now feel so grateful for. 

I slowly learned the basics of our household standards: pilaf with vermicelli noodles, Bulgarian meatball soup, moussaka and dolma. I mostly observed and tried not to intervene because the few times I did, I slowed my mom down and got in the way. I watched how she used her hands to scoop roughly chopped onions into a pool of olive oil with a slice of butter for taste, and then liberally season them with paprika and chubritsa, a dried herb essential to the Bulgarian kitchen. 

Fast-forward to 2021, and we’re back in the same kitchen. My mother and I don’t really cook together; typically it’s only one of us preparing dinner for the family at a time. 

Varty (left) and Gayane Yahjian / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

Except this time we’ve decided to collaborate — on a popular Western Armenian dish, vospov kofte, lentil “meatballs.”  

Vospov in Armenian translates to “with lentil” and kofte, or “meatball,” is spelled in Turkish. Neither word necessarily explains where the dish originates from. Lest we forget, the majority of the Middle East and all of Anatolia — where my great-grandparents are from — were under Ottoman rule for centuries. Present-day Armenia and Turkey share a border, and given their history, attributing food to either one is fertile ground for an argument in the comments section.

Typically the dish is served as part of the cold mezze on Western Armenian dining tables. It’s popular during Lent, when animal products are shunned in observation of Jesus Christ’s forty days resisting the devil’s temptation. As such, Armenian Lenters have gotten pretty creative over the last two thousand years in reworking dishes to meet the orthodoxy’s expectations. Vospov kofte is one of these remixes, where beef or lamb is swapped with red lentils and bulgur to make for a lighter, all-vegan version that pleases God and mortals alike. It’s so delicious that in our family, we enjoy it year-round.  

Given our foundational cooking disagreements, the idea of my mom and I preparing these vospov koftes together is a big deal. 

We begin by bickering over which saucepan to use, a common pre-cooking ritual for us. I prefer to use a smaller pot, but my mother insists (and I’ll now admit rightfully so) that we’ll need the larger one to contain the lava-like bubbles red lentils make when they simmer into a thick paste.

After enough shuffling around one another in near-silence, the tension finally breaks as we laugh about how the measuring cup could have disappeared into thin air. 

We measure out and soak bulgur, which will get stirred into the thick lentil paste along with parsley, spices, scallions and sautéed onions, discuss the supremacy of Italian parsley over curly-leaf as we chop, and compare the ways we’ve failed at trying to cut onions without crying. We learn that neither of us is the timer-setting type, and our bulgur probably spends a bit too long soaking. Not a big deal, though.

We hand-knead everything together with great conviction, and slowly it turns into an aromatic paste, sticking to our fingers. After scraping as much of it off our palms into the bowl as we can, we set aside a little bowl of water, dip our fingers in, and start shaping the kofte into its characteristic, ovalesque shape, lengthened on the ends and slightly flattened in the middle. We arrange our koftes in a neat wreath, decorate it with more chopped parsley, and then finally face the truth: It is extremely rare to find us in the kitchen together. Why is that?

“Because you always tell me what to do for no reason,” I say with a touch of shade.

Vospov kofte / Photograph by Varty Yahjian

My mom pauses, and for a millisecond drops eye contact before returning with the smile of someone who’s seen me spit out celery and start fights over cilantro: “You have a great taste, and everything you make is very yummy. Let’s cook together more.” 

And because she wouldn’t be my mother without giving me a task, she hugs me and says, “Just you need to do clean-up after you cook.” 

I’ll heed her words, because she’s right: The countertop is a cacophony of utensils, parsley stems and spilled cumin. But for once, this mother and daughter are totally, deliciously, in sync. 

Varty Yahjian lives, works and cooks in La Cañada, California. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders. 

How to make your own Tunisian-syle harissa — and why you'll be thrilled you did

By Leslie Brenner

Sure, the stuff in the tube is pretty darn good. But there’s nothing like homemade harissa — North Africa’s signature brick-red, aromatic chile paste.

Just ask UNESCO, which granted harissa from Tunisia a place on its “intangible cultural heritage” list last December.

Tunisian-style harissa is incredibly vibrant, velvety and alive, and though only a few ingredients comprise it, it has remarkable depth of flavor.

Given its worldwide popularity, you’d think there’d be recipes for it all over the internet. You’d be wrong: While there are a gazillion recipes using it as an ingredient, there are shockingly few recipes out there — at least on Anglophile and Francophile sites — for making something like the real Tunisian deal at home.

It’s quite simple to make; there are only four basic ingredients: dried chiles, caraway seeds, coriander seeds and garlic. Plus salt, of course, and olive oil to preserve it. All the formulas you might turn up that include things like tomato, cumin, cilantro or lemon juice? Maybe they’re good, maybe they’re not; hard to imagine that they improve upon the Tunisian classic.

It starts with dried chiles. In Tunisia they come from Cap Bon, Kairouan, Sidi Bouzid and Gabes, according to a film that was part of Tunisia’s submission for the UNESCO listing. Other sources mention Nabeul. In the Americas, the closest chiles to those are said to be guajillos and California chiles.

Snip them open with kitchen shears or scissors, shaking out the seeds and removing the stems. Seed removal is important for the best flavor in texture. Leave the seeds in, and you have a harissa that’s punishingly hot. Remove them, and you get incredible chile flavor, minus the fire. Instead of a tiny dab, you can swipe a piece of bread through harissa and relish it. Note that in the video, the woman making harissa from dried chiles shakes out the seeds before grinding them.

Rinse them, then soak them in boiling water for about 30 minutes, so they become soft and pliable. In Tunisia, a manual grinder — like a meat grinder — is traditionally used to grind the chiles. A food processor or blender does the job nicely.

READ: It’s a semolina granule, it’s a dreamy stew, it’s a Mahgreb celebration: couscous!

For the spices — caraway and coriander seeds — grind them yourself for the best flavor. Sure, you could use pre-ground spices, but as long as you’re going to the trouble to make harissa, why cut corners?

Throw the spices, the rehydrated chiles, a few garlic cloves, salt and a little olive oil in the processor, and blitz away, until you have a smooth paste. That’s it. You have harissa. Maybe you’ll need to add a little water along the way.

Taste it, and swoon. Use it in a favorite recipe — go ahead, use more than you might if you were squeezing a tube. Stir it into a soup. Slather it on a roasted sweet potato. Or serve it with a tagine or couscous. Ready to store it? Put it in a jar, cover it with olive oil, and your supply will last in the fridge for months.

RECIPE: Harissa

---

Want free recipes delivered to your inbox? Sign up below!

---

Did you enjoy this story? You might like:

READ: “Salsa macha is the hottest condiment of the year, and we’ve got the best recipe”

READ: “It's a semolina granule, it's a dreamy stew, it's a Mahgreb celebration: couscous!”

READ: “Sweet potatoes are here! Don’t wait till Thanksgiving to celebrate one of earth’s perfect foods”

READ: “The flavor-packed, vegan, zero-waste, lentil-and-greens soup that earned a hundred encores and endless spins”

Carottes Râpées, France’s ubiquitous carrot salad, gets a game-changing upgrade

By Leslie Brenner

It’s about time carottes râpées got an upgrade. The simple carrot salad, ubiquitous in France, is what French people make when they don’t have anything but carrots in the larder, or their imagination has run dry. Dressed with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper and maybe a little Dijon mustard, it has the potential to be delightful. Yet most French people are anything but excited to see it land on the table.

That’s because it’s usually made with a box grater (râpées means “grated”); it’s a salad whose wood-shavings-like texture nearly always drags it down. At least in France it’s not weighed down by raisins and mayo, the way it might be in America; the French do keep it light and savory.

Those who want to take some time and care with it are capable of culinary magic: elevating an ordinary dish to something you might even serve to friends. They take out their sharpest knife and, after peeling the carrots, cut them into fine julienne. That’s what James Oseland suggested in his 2021 book World Food: Paris.

Julienned carottes râpées

And he’s right — it is much nicer.

But cutting carrots into julienne is also a lot of work, even if you use a mandoline.

Recently I found a better way to elevate the dish: Once you’re done peeling the carrots, just keep going — use the peeler to shave the entire carrot into ribbons. Before long, and with little effort, you’ll have a mountain of ribbons. Dress it with the classic combo of lemon and olive oil, snip some chives on top (or parsley, or chervil, or dill) and you’re good to go. The ribbons give the salad lovely texture. Add some nigella seeds or poppy seeds if you want to give it a little more dimension. But only if you want to. The ribbon treatment alone makes it really nice.

It’s that little bit of culinary magic: You’ve turned the dish into a plate of tangy, fresh, bright, ribbony delightfulness.

And you didn’t have to turn on the stove.

RECIPE: Carottes Râpées, Ribbon-Style

Want free recipes delivered to your inbox? Sign up below!

Summer of Ceviche: How to create an alluringly spicy-cool and balanced aguachile, vegan or otherwise

By Leslie Brenner

[Editor’s note: This is Part 3 of a multi-part series. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.]

In the hands of an able chef, aguachile — northwest Mexico’s take on ceviche — can be so enticing. Yet try a recipe pulled off the internet, even from one of the most trustworthy cooking sites, and chances are it will be so acidic it scrapes the enamel off your teeth, and so chile-hot, you can’t eat more than one bite.

A recipe on one of those respected sites starts by blending three stemmed and seeded serranos with 3/4 cup straight lime juice and salt; two more serranos (plus some ground pequins) are added later.

What’s wrong with that?

The chiles, for starters. Five? Why not 10? The resulting aguachile may well be inedible either way.

That’s because all serranos are not created anything like equal. They can range in length from about one to four inches, and in Scoville heat from 10,000 to 25,000 units. One serrano can be powerfully spicy. Or relatively mild. So calling for a specific number of them without providing opportunities to taste and adjust is absolute folly.

All serranos are not created equal!

Much smarter is to start with a small amount of serrano, then gradually add more, if needed. That way you won’t wind up wishing you could subtract. Our recipe lets you do that.

RECIPE: Hearts of Palm Aguachile

Then there’s the lime juice. As we explained in Part 1 of this series, lime juice’s acid needs to be tamed to make a good ceviche, one that’s not harsh and twangy. That is, it needs to be diluted with a measure of something less acidic — orange juice, water, coconut water or something else.

READ: Summer of Ceviche Part 1

But wait — what exactly is an aguachile, anyway?

Let’s back up and talk about what makes an aguachile an aguachile, and how they’ve been evolving.

In Sinaloa, their birthplace, traditional aguachiles are shrimp ceviches spiked with wild chiltepín chiles; their sauce is a suspension of chiles in water — hence the name, which means “chile water.” Michael Snyder wrote an excellent piece about them for Eater a couple years ago.

The dish has captured the imaginations of chefs and other cooks far beyond Sinaloa. While shrimp versions are popular wherever aguachiles are found, as the dish has evolved, all kinds of seafood are getting the aguachile treatment. In Mexico City, chef Gabriela Cámara has two octopus aguachiles on her menu at Contramar — one green, the other red. Stateside, the Los Angeles restaurant Holbox has one starring Baja bay scallops. In New York City, Enrique Olvera’s Cosme offers one with hiramasa (amberjack), along with rhubarb and shiso.

In Dallas, where I live, Molino Olōyō chef and co-owner Olivia Lopez (who is also Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican Cuisine expert) has featured fluke in a spectacular aguachile with watermelon, green habanero and coriander at a couple of recent pop-up dinners, and kampachi with peaches in one at a recent take-out pop-up.

But aguachile is not just for seafood: There’s a beef aguachile on the menu at El Carlos Elegante (my favorite Mexican place to bring out-of-town visitors), and I recently enjoyed a Wagyu steak aguachile at a delightful Tex-Mex spot, Las Palmas.

And in the hands of careful chefs, deliciousness is the goal, not creating something so searingly spiced that only chile daredevils will enjoy it.

An aguachile for vegans

Aguachiles made with hearts of palm — palmitos in Spanish — have been popping up all over the internet. Made well and balanced properly, they can be wonderful: The texture of the hearts of palm almost mimics scallops or halibut. Adding slices of avocado adds richness. The best ones are not just great vegan aguachiles, but great aguachiles.

Unfortunately, as with seafood aguachiles, far too many of the palmito versions call for a lot of straight lime juice, and a stupidly precise number of chiles — four on that same respected cooking site that used five in the seafood aguachile. If you used four of the serranos currently residing in my fridge, the result would be inedible.

Our palmito aguachile recipe takes a soft approach — and its sauce is so delicious, you may want to drink it from the plate. We start with two parts coconut water, one part lime juice and a handful of cilantro, add a little salt and blitz it with one-quarter of one seeded serrano. Yep, just one quarter!

Taste it. If it’s spicy enough, you’re good to proceed. Want more heat? Add more serrano and blitz again. Repeat until you’re happy. The sauce has lovely body thanks to the cilantro; and it’s visually appealing, to boot. As you can see on the photo at the top of the story, the chile and herbs are suspended in the clear liquid. It looks the part of aguachile.

Next you arrange sliced hearts of palm on a platter with radishes, sliced avocado and ribbons of cucumber; slivers of red onion that have soaked in water to soften their flavor are nice in there as well. Pour the sauce over, and garnish with some chile threads, if you like.

But don’t feel like you need to go vegan with this sauce; it works well as an all-purpose aguachile bath. Substitute quickly blanched shrimp for the hearts of palm, and it’s differently delicious. Or use both palmitos and shrimp. Or skip the palmitos and use thinly sliced sea bass or other white fish, letting it “cook” about five minutes in the sauce before serving. The world is your oyster.

And yes — you could use oysters!

Whatever you use, tostadas make a nice accompaniment.

RECIPE: Hearts of Palm Aguachile

RECIPE: Tostadas

---

Want free recipes delivered to your inbox? Sign up below!

5 favorite chilled soups — all of them vegetarian or vegan

Turkish cacik — chilled yogurt and cucumber soup with mint and dill

By Leslie Brenner

When the weather is sizzling hot, there’s nothing like a cold soup to refresh and restore.

Here are my five current faves. Two are vegan (the gazpachos); three are made without even turning on the stove (the gazpachos and the cacik). All are vegetarian. The borscht can also be vegan, if you leave off the sour cream stirred in at the end.

Cacik — Turkish Yogurt and Cucumber Soup

I love the traditional Turkish yogurt-and-cucumber soup known as cacik, first because it’s delicious and simple, but also because it you can make it in no time flat, by hand, without turning on the stove or even plugging anything in. Just whisk some yogurt to smoothness, add cucumber you’ve grated on a box grater, and whisk it together with chopped fresh mint and dill, a little white wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Drop an ice cube in each bowl, top with more herbs (if you like) and enjoy.

Making cacik is a decidedly low-tech endeavor.

RECIPE: Cacik — Cold Yogurt and Cucumber Soup

Gazpacho Sevillano

Have some gorgeous ripe tomatoes? Seville’s classic tomato gazpacho is the play. Its beautiful sherry tang makes it super refreshing.

RECIPE: Gazpacho Sevillano

The Greenest Gazpacho

Easy, herbal and honestly pretty dreamy, this green vegan gazpacho gets body from raw almonds or cashews.

RECIPE: The Greenest Gazpacho

My Mom’s Cold Beet Borscht

This is one of my favorite summer meals — my mom’s recipe. It’s lightly sweet, tangy and transporting.

RECIPE: Joan’s Cold Beet Borscht

Chilled Minted Pea Soup

Our Ridiculously Easy Mint Pea Soup — based on a traditional French potage Saint Germain — is normally served hot, as shown above. Leave off the crème fraîche garnish and chill it, and it’s fabulous eaten cold.

RECIPE: Ridiculously Easy Minted Pea Soup

---

READ: It’s the summer of ceviche: Here’s how to mastermind a great one

READ: Shrimp Louie belongs on your table this summer

READ: 12 Great dishes to invite to a vegan picnic

Sign up for free Cooks Without Borders recipes delivered to your in-box!

12 great dishes to invite to a vegan picnic

Herb-Happy Potato Salad

By Leslie Brenner

Why eat inside when you can eat outside? That’s my philosophy anytime the weather’s fine. And whether you’re vegan, or you like to eat plant-based sometimes or much of the time, it just feels nice to keep things light and clean when you’re being outdoorsy and maybe a hike or nature walk is in the picture.

To that end, here are a dozen vegan treats to pack in a basket. They’re mostly simple to put together, and many can be made the night before and kept chilled till you’re ready to roll.

Classic Tabbouleh

Minty, fragrant and portable, classic tabbouleh is a perfect picnic food that satisfies summer tomato cravings. Our recipe, adapted from Anissa Helou’s Feast: Food of the Islamic World, calls for romaine leaves for scooping it up; lately we’ve been loving it with organic little gems.

RECIPE: Classic Tabbouleh

Giant White Beans with Lemon Zest and Olive Oil

This dish came to us through a cookbook we love — La Buvette: Recipes and Wine Notes from Paris, by Camille Fourmont and Kate Leahy. The book is about Fourmont’s Paris wine bar, and this super simple prep was one of the first things she started serving there. No formal recipe required: Open a can of gigante beans or butter beans, rinse and drain them well, drizzle with great olive oil and finish with citrus zest and flaky salt, such as Maldon. Fourmont changes up her zest choice according to the season (mandarin! bergamot!), but we find it irresistible with lemon. If you want to be really fancy, you can bring the zest and Maldon salt separately, and finish it after you’ve given the beans a quick toss to recoat them in olive oil at the picnic.

Fragrant Dressed Tofu

We fell for this dish recently as we tested recipes from Hannah Che’s inspiring The Vegan Chinese Kitchen for a review. Meant to be eaten room-temp or chilled, it’s ideal picnic fare.

RECIPE: Fragrant Dressed Tofu

Spinach with Sesame Dressing

This classic Japanese starter or side — served at room temp — will be vegan if you make it with vegan dashi. To make vegan dashi, soak a piece of kombu (about 4 inches square) in filtered water at room temperature for 3 to 10 hours, then drain.

RECIPE: Spinach with Sesame Dressing

Charred Summer Salad

Designed to be served warm, this beautiful toss is also great at room-temp. Leave off the optional cheese for the vegan version.

RECIPE: Charred Summer Salad

Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh

This spin on classic tabbouleh — swapping quinoa for bulghur wheat and peas for chick peas and doing without tomatoes — is one of our all-time favorite picnic foods. We always make a double batch, it’s so good.

RECIPE: Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh

Sweet Home Café’s Spicy Pickled Okra

Quite simply the best pickled okra we’ve ever tasted, these are adapted from a recipe in Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook. (Sweet Home Cafe is the restaurant in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C.) The pickles are crispy and tangy — with just a touch of sugar.

RECIPE: Sweet Home Café’s Spicy Pickled Okra

Herb-Happy Potato Salad

Shown in the photo at the top of this story, this is riffable potato salad is elegant, pretty and delicious. For a picnic, bring the herbs along in a separate container and scatter them on top at the picnic table.

RECIPE: Herb-Happy Potato Salad

Baba Ganoush

We love this classic baba ganoush with homemade pita bread, but for a picnic, we’ll pick up pita at the supermarket or a Lebanese bakery.

RECIPE: Baba Ganoush

Hummus, dressed as you like

Preternaturally smooth hummus can be yours, whether you want to start from dried chick peas or open a can of garbanzos. Either way, it’s always at home at a picnic — especially if you picked up that pita bread. Dress it with olive oil and sumac, or make it fancy by dropping a handful of fresh herbs and sliced radishes on top.

RECIPE: Amazing Cheater Hummus

RECIPE: Ultimate Hummus

Smashed Cucumber Salad

Here’s another eminently riffable dish that travels well. This version is adapted from The Vegan Chinese Kitchen.

RECIPE: Smashed Cucumber Salad

Minted Fruit Salad

This fruit dessert is so basic, you don’t need a recipe — just toss whatever cut-up fruit you like with mint and a little Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur (or orange juice). In case you’d like a roadmap (or want to learn how to cut orange supremes), here’s a recipe:

RECIPE: Minted Fruit Salad

---

MORE RECIPES: Find more plant-based recipes from Cooks Without Borders

READ: Brunch, picnic or dinner: 18 delightful recipes for Mother’s Day

Sign up for free Cooks Without Borders recipes delivered to your in-box!

Cookbooks We Love: Hannah Che's 'The Vegan Chinese Kitchen' is gorgeous and inspiring

By Leslie Brenner

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen: Recipes and Modern Stories from a Thousand-Year-Old Tradition, by Hannah Che, Clarkson Potter, 2022, $35

Last year, we included Hannah Che’s The Vegan Chinese Kitchen in our Best Books of 2022 roundup, having pored through its recipes, read Che’s story, marveled at her exquisite photos (yes, she does them herself!) and tested one of the recipes. Since then, The New York Times chose the book as one of its 10 best cookbooks of the year (the Washington Post had already done the same); a few months later, the James Beard Foundation honored it with a Best Cookbook Award nomination for Vegetable-Focused Cooking.

I’ve finally had a chance to test three more of the recipes, and continue to be thoroughly impressed. The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is a thoroughly wonderful book — one that anyone seriously interested in Chinese cooking and food culture, or vegan cooking (or both) would do well to explore.

Backgrounder

Che, the Portland, Oregon-based creator of the excellent blog The Plant-Based Wok, was raised in Detroit, Michigan, by Chinese immigrant parents; she founded the blog when she was in college at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Having fallen in love with plant-based cooking, she worried that her vegan lifestyle was at odds with her Chinese culture, but in time she came to understand much of Chinese cooking is “inherently plant-based,” and in fact offered her a way to connect in a deeply meaningful way with her heritage. After graduate school (in piano) she left for China, where she studied at the only vegetarian cooking school in the country, in Guangzhou. China. There she immersed herself in zhai cai, the plant-based cuisine with centuries-old Buddhist roots that emphasizes umami-rich ingredients. She had been to China before (with her family), and has returned since; along the way she interned at a renowned tofu restaurant and taught English in Taiwan — soaking up foodways everywhere she went.

Why We Love It

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen is a beautiful book in every way, and Che is a wonderful story-teller. Even if you’re tempted to skip the intro, don’t — in the course of its six or seven pages, Che manages to convey a life-lesson about mindful cooking and the Chinese spirit that’s truly inspiring.

Following that is a useful roadmap about how to create a vegan (or really any) Chinese meal: “you serve enough rice for everyone to eat their fill, along with a spread of accompanying dishes.” The rule is to plan one dish per person, plus one extra, and “aim for a variety of textures, tastes and colors” — and cooking methods. Noodle dishes or other one-pot meals are the standalone exceptions.

If, like me, you’re attracted to cookbooks that open up cultures from within and help you better understand something deep about that culture, The Vegan Chinese Kitchen delivers.

How to Kick Off a Chinese Vegan Meal

Two recipes that Che characterizes as popular appetizers in restaurants in China caught my eye. One is Blanched Spinach with Sesame Sauce — I’ll make that soon. Another is Smashed Cucumber Salad, which Che calls “one of the most ubiquitous Chinese starter dishes.” About a decade ago, the dish was super trendy stateside. I hadn’t made it in some years, and Che’s version (a particularly good one) is a reminder of why it’s so appealing: It’s craveable, crunchy, vinegary, delicious and quick to achieve.

RECIPE: Smashed Cucumber Salad

Let Us Cook the Salad, Shall We?

Che’s photo of Blanched Lettuce with Ginger Soy Sauce was the image that first grabbed me hard when I cracked open the book: I had to make it. (Her photo is a lot nicer than mine.)

Skeptical about cooked lettuce? Che was, until she learned that “Chinese cooks treat lettuces like any other leafy green” and tried dishes like this one.

Once you blanch the romaine leaves, the sauce comes together in a flash. Put them together, and you’ve got something simple and fabulous.

RECIPE: Hannah Che’s Blanched Lettuce with Ginger Sauce

You Want This in Your Fridge

Here’s another crave-able, zingy one. Che writes in her headnote that she often makes a big batch of Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli Salad to enjoy for weekday lunches. I’ve taken her suggestion and wholeheartedly recommend it.

RECIPE: Napa Cabbage and Vermicelli Salad.

One of Che’s Personal Faves

Che’s chapters on Tofu and Tofu Skin are particularly compelling, not only for the recipes, but also for the history and discussion of the culture around it. Before living in China and learning how it’s traditionally made, Che had viewed tofu — as many Chinese people do — as an inferior food. “It’s a cheap, common food in China,” she reflects, “not as refined or exalted in tradition as it is in Japan, where tofu, brought over by monks, first entered as a temple delicacy for the samurai class.” That all turned around for her the more she dove into the culture — including her internship with a tofu master.

I swooped in on one of the humbler recipes because Che wrote in her headnote that she makes it probably three or four times a week. “The easiest way to cook tofu,” she writes in the headnote, “is to quickly blanch it, then season with salt and sesame oil and fold in a handful of finely chopped scallions or fresh herbs.” It’s a preparation known as liangban. This was very good as written, and I’ll definitely be riffing on it for years to come.

RECIPE: Hannah Che’s Fragrant Dressed Tofu

Still Wanna Make

So many dishes! Blanched Sweet Potato Greens (which Che says are available in many Asian supermarkets, though I’ve never noticed them) with Crispy Shallots. Stir-Fried Diced Choy Sum and Tofu. Stir-Fried Water Spinach with Fermented Tofu (Che calls fermented tofu “the vegan chef’s secret ingredient”). Slivered Celtuce with Sesame Oil. Stir-Fried Garlic Chives with Pressed Tofu. Clay Pot-Braised Eggplant with Basil. Stir-Fried Potato Threads with Fragrant Chiles. Soft Tofu with Black Bean Sauce. Steamed Tofu Skin with Ginger, Black Beans & Frizzled Scallions. Braised Tofu Skins in Chili Bean Sauce.

So much tofu, so little time, right?!

Oh, more more thing. Only after I my last spate of cooking from the book did I realize that many of the dishes are served room temperature or cold — which means that not only are the great for do-ahead entertaining, but also that they’re great for summer picnics and potlucks. Just in the nick of time!

Go ahead and take the recipes for a spin. If you like them as much as I do, treat yourself to the book. I think you’ll be glad you did.

---

Here are more stories celebrating Asian culture in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month:

“Cookbooks We Love: ‘The Woks of Life’ brims with outstanding Chinese and Chinese-American recipes”

“Cookbooks We Love: Hooni Kim’s ‘My Korea’ is a knockout of a Korean cooking primer”

“Cookbooks We Love: The flavors of India’s cultural capital shine in ‘Kolkata’”

“Author Andrea Nguyen brings unforgettable Vietnamese flavor into every home cook’s wheelhouse”

“Cookbooks We Love: Leela Punyaratabandhu’s life-changing ‘Simple Thai Food’ is one of our favorite primers ever”

“Sonoko Sakai’s ‘Japanese Home Cooking’ is one of the best new cookbooks to come along in years”

Sign up for free Cooks Without Borders recipes delivered to your in-box!

The flavor-packed, vegan, zero-waste lentil-and-greens soup that earned a hundred encores and endless spins

By Leslie Brenner

Feel like eating vegan today? Treat yourself to a pot of an easy, surprisingly quick-to-make lentil soup. It’s deliciously multi-dimensional: underlined with warm spices, brightened with tomato, umamified with dried mushrooms, enlivened with tender greens. It’s packed with phytochemicals and health-enhancing super-foods. It’s a colorful, health-enhancing heavy-lifter for your zero-waste aspirations that will fill your kitchen with gorgeous aromas.

It cooks in about an hour. Make a pot in the morning, and if you’re working at home, you have a week’s worth of magnificent lunches. Work somewhere away? It’s quick enough to pull together when you get home.

If you keep lentils and a can of tomatoes on hand, and tend to have greens in the fridge (including that half-bag of tired arugula, or a some frozen spinach), you can put the soup together whenever you feel like it without shopping.

This is not the first time I’ve written about this soup; I dreamt it up 7 years ago and have been sustained by it and spinning on it ever since.

Start with aromatic vegetables: onion, carrot, celery and friends. Add herbs and garlic, then spices — turmeric and coriander. The base can be French green lentils or black Umbrian lentils, or both. A can of diced tomatoes plus water, and simmer for 45 or 50 minutes. Toss in greens — half a bag of baby kale, spinach or arugula, maybe some cayenne or harissa. That’s it.

Make it once, and then you can spin endlessly. Stare into your fridge before you start and see what vegetables need to be used up — raw in the drawer, or cooked leftovers. Is a turnip or a piece of daikon lurking therein? Dice it and throw it in with the carrots. Raw cauliflower or broccoli? Dice ‘em up and in they go with the tomatoes. Cooked spinach, carrots, cauliflower or what have you? Toss them in halfway through, or near the end. You are not sacrificing the soup’s integrity by cleaning out your fridge into the pot: You’re making something even more delicious.

You can play with the spices, too, depending on your mood. Sometimes I feel like pushing the soup in an Asian direction, and add ginger — fresh or ground. When I do that, I frequently throw in some red lentils for added dal-like creaminess. Maybe I’ll triple the turmeric and swap dried shiitakes for the porcini.

Anyway, you get the idea. If you’re the follow-a-recipe type, here are two — the original, and the gingery, turmeric-happy spin.

RECIPE: Green Lentil and Baby Kale Soup

RECIPE: Gingery Lentil and Greens Soup

Are you more the let-me-loose-to-improvise kind of cook? Here’s a master recipe with endless opportunities to spin. I love to do this on Sunday, for the fridge-clean win.

RECIPE: Sunday Super Soup

---

If you enjoyed this story, you might like:

READ: “Greatest vegetable rehabilitation ever: Brussels sprouts’ 23-year rise to culinary power”

READ: “Bring on the bayos: Showing some love for Mexico’s creamy, dreamy other bean — and its kissin’ cousin mayocoba”

EXPLORE: All Cooks Without Borders’ vegan/vegetarian/plant-based recipes

Sign up for free Cooks Without Borders recipes delivered to your in-box!

For the best (and easiest!) ratatouille, capture the fabulous flavor of late summer by roasting those vegetables

By Leslie Brenner

Ratatouille — the famous French stew of zucchini, eggplant, peppers and tomatoes — always sounds so much better than it winds up tasting. It took an actual trip to France for me to discover how to make one that’s actually pretty fabulous.

One evening on my recent sojourn there, I needed to make dinner for my French in-laws, whose gastronomic leanings present a challenge. Belle-mère and beau-père, my parents-in-law, require old-fashioned food (yes, French —what else is there?), while belle-soeur, my sister-in-law, is vegan. My husband Thierry and I? We just want something good.

Thierry had the answer: ratatouille.

Visions of courgettes and aubergines (so much more beguiling than zucchini and eggplants!) danced in my head, which I lost for a moment, conjuring next an image of a gorgeous dish of perfectly cooked late-summer deep greens and reds and golds.

And then a panic-pause as reality set in: Come to think of it, I’d never had a ratatouille I’ve loved — including, but not limited to the ones produced in my own kitchen. Liked OK, yes. Loved, certainly not. The result, achieved on the stovetop and not terribly fun to make, is usually kind of watery, tomatoey and monotonous, with pillows of eggplant that skew either spongy or sodden.

Not seeing an alternative, and after all, it was late summer, I committed to the project and headed to the supermarché — actually, a lovely supermarché bio (organic) that had sprung up in the four years since I’d last visited the small seaside town, not far from Bordeaux. In any case, I’d buy some good crusty bread to sop it up; some great cheese post-ratatouille would probably be the highlight of the meal.

Necessity, I’d forgotten to remember, is the belle-mère of invention. And my belle-mère’s kitchen is not terribly well appointed. Therefore, failing to find a skillet large enough for ratatouille for five, I turned on the oven. I’d roast the eggplant, which might actually be an upgrade from cooking in a pan. (It was!) While I was at it, I’d roast a red bell pepper, and half of the zucchini, thereby saving room in the skillet. Why did I not roast all the zucchini? Because the oven was too tiny. (Go ahead and mentally insert that forehead-slap emoji.)

Onto the stove’s electric heat went the medium skillet, then a glug of olive oil, into which I pressed, once it was hot, the remaining zucchini. I seared those rounds nice and golden-brown, so they’d maybe keep their integrity and some texture (they did!), then set them aside. Next I sweated diced onion, adding garlic, which I’d minced with a paring knife sharp as a spoon. Ding! The eggplant was roasted. (No, I didn’t use a timer, but felt this story could use a sound effect.) A fork poked into the thick rounds found little resistance, so out it came — and hey, turned out the red bell pepper and those darling courgettes were done, too. While the onion softened, I cubed the soft eggplant (not a problem with the spoon-knife!), peeled and cut up the pepper.

Now the pressure was on: The table was set, the entrées (first courses in France) were in place. I don’t even remember what the entrée was, so focused was I on the plat. Maybe the starter was saucisson, a crowd favorite for all but my belle-soeur. The clock was ticking perilously close to 8:00. I felt grateful that my 95-year-old parents-in-law were an ocean apart from the early-bird proclivities of America’s seniors.

Into the pan went the aubergine, along with the courgettes (roasted and pan-seared) and peppers for a brief hot mingle together, and then a couple cut-up tomatoes. I tasted and seasoned, and wow — that ratatouille was pretty damn good! I sent it to the table decorated with torn basil.

The verdict? They loved it.

You might be saying, of course they said they loved it. They’re your family-in-law. But it was ratatouille: It’s never that good.

It was very good. Nicer than any I’d probably ever had, with better texture and deeper flavor: Late summer concentrated in a luscious, light, saucy, tasty, vegan, traditional French dish.

Ten days later, I was back home, and Thierry — who remained in France for a bit — texted me that he wanted the recipe. (Thierry, who doesn’t even cook!) I wrote him out a recipe. He cooked it. He loved it again, and texted photos — also something he never does with food.

Craving it suddenly (how weird!), I made it again — at home, in my own kitchen, with sharp knives and full-size oven, and weights and measures for recipe building. Also a practical tweak or two, such as all the zucchini gets roasted, along with the garlic. The resulting method is simplicity itself. Everything roasts for the same length of time, and altogether it’s quicker, easier and less fussy than the traditional way. And yes, more delicious.

Traditionalists may scoff. To them I say: dudes. Try this. A hundred euros says you’ll never go back.

RECIPE: Roasted Ratatouille

Recipe for today: Beat the heat with zingy, cool and refreshing Gazpacho Sevillano

By Leslie Brenner

Yipes! The mercury reached 112 degrees in Portland, Oregon yesterday! Let’s hope for quick relief for our friends in the Pacific Northwest.

Until the outdoor thermometer cooperates, delicious relief can be a cool bowl of Gazpacho Sevillano. Down here in hot-as-blazes Texas, it feels like this week opens gazpacho season, as our friends with gardens and farms have been gifting us with gorgeous heirloom tomatoes bursting with flavor. When a windfall like that happens faster than you can gobble up the treasures (or when finally start seeing tasty-looking tomatoes in the markets), it’s the moment to grab some cukes as well, pull out your sherry vinegar and plug in the blender.

Our recipe for the classic Spanish summer refresher is a smooth-as-silk, elegant, purist version; the headnote offers a couple of short-cuts for a quickie version that gratifies instantly and deliciously.

Pro-tip: You don’t even have to wait for it to chill in the fridge — just drop a couple of ice cubes in each bowl and enjoy right away!

RECIPE: Gazpacho Sevillano

Recipe for Today: A super-light spring vegetable soup for purists — vegan or not!

By Leslie Brenner

Memorial Day has come and gone, which means true summer is just around the corner.

Meanwhile, the delightful produce of spring — asparagus and peas, leeks and tender young carrots, and spring-happy herbs like dill — still taste so right. Before we know it they’ll be yesterday’s news, and we’ll have moved onto corn and tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and okra.

So, quick — make this soup, which eats like a poem about springtime. You can make it vegan, as it was conceived, or swap store-bought chicken broth for the leek broth, if you want more instant gratification.

Either way, if the longest intensive cooking spree in American history has left you a few pounds over, it’s a beautiful way to eat light and pure.

RECIPE: Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

Recipe for Today: Heading toward the weekend, we’re thinking endless guacamole

By Leslie Brenner

Is there anything more festive than a molcajete filled with guacamole? As a party-starter — whether it’s a party of two or twenty — it can’t be beat.

Our friends who garden seem to all have cilantro that’s gardening at the moment, and its delicate lacy blossoms make the nicest garnish, if you can get them.

Of course you’ll need ripe avocados, which is why we’re talking about this now. Memorial Day weekend — summer’s unofficial kickoff — is just about here, and if you grab a few avocados that are not quite ripe, you can put ‘em in a paper bag and they’ll be ready to smash just when you need them.

Whether your Memorial Day festivities skew toward carne asada or burgers on the grill, or even a fabulous vegan mixed grill, you don’t need to overthink the party-starter. Haven’t made plans? Mash up some guac, tear open a bag of chips and invite a friend. See? The party’s here.

RECIPE: Guacamole, the traditional way

Recipe for Today: The Greenest Gazpacho

By Leslie Brenner

Cucumbers, celery, green bell peppers, parsley and a serrano give this green gazpacho its gorgeous color. Raw almonds or cashews add body, and sherry vinegar provides zing and olive oil (use your best, freshest one) makes it silky and deep.

Because there is no bread in it, it is not technically a gazpacho, but that vinegar-and-nut vibe definitely makes it eat like one — not the vibrant tomatoey kind that’s the word “gazpacho” usually brings to mind, but its cousin ajo blanco, or white gazpacho. (Ajo blanco, beloved in its birthplace of Málaga, Spain, is made with bread, garlic, almonds, salt and sherry vinegar — and in summer, garnished with green grapes.)

Our Greenest Gazpacho is just the thing for a meatless Monday. (It’s vegan! And gluten-free!) It’ll keep you cool and happy all through the summer.

RECIPE: The Greenest Gazpacho

Beautiful, light, and herbal: This easy-to-customize vegan soup gracefully celebrates spring

By Leslie Brenner

A couple weeks ago — shortly after spring had sprung — a recipe in the Washington Post captured my fancy. Its lede photo depicted a brothy bowl with peas and spinach, leeks and dill in varying shades of green, set off gorgeously with pink-skinned, white-fleshed potatoes. The story’s author and the recipe’s creator, Ellie Krieger, offered it up as “Proof spring is soup season, too.”

Had to have it! I made the soup that very evening, and absolutely loved it. No question I’ll make it again and again.

Still, in my mind’s test kitchen, I couldn’t help but riff. Wouldn’t it be lovely with some asparagus tips? English or snap peas still clinging to their pods? Fresh favas or field peas, if I happened upon them? Wouldn’t turnips be just as nice as potatoes — or even nicer, if it’s optimal healthy one is after, or if you could find those beautiful tiny Tokyo turnips? Sure, I’d lose that pretty pink flourish, but I could add slices of slender springtime carrots instead.

And hey, couldn’t this soup be made vegan — if I created a broth out of the castaway tops of leeks I’m forever gathering in the crisper (the WaPo recipe added to my stash), would that have sufficient flavor?

Well, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! The very next night, that riffing went live — and the result was grand.

I call it Vegan Spring Beaty Soup partly because it’s beautiful to look at, and partly because of its healthful purity: I imagine that the more frequently you eat it, the more beautiful you become.

Even after I created our vegan version, the test kitchen lobe of my brain continued to riff. You could use just about any kind of soft herbs: chervil, tarragon, cilantro, mint. If the vegan part’s not important to you, you could swap dashi for leek broth, and maybe add a dash of white soy sauce, and lots of sliced scallions in place of the herbs.

Of course, if you want to keep it super-easy, you can use the store-bought chicken broth, as Krieger’s recipe does — do that, and it comes together in 25 minutes or less.

Ain’t that beautiful?

RECIPE: Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

Say hello to the tangy green sauce that will change your life for the brighter — and its great-uncle, chimichurri

By Leslie Brenner

Wouldn’t life be grand if you had an easy sauce you could whip together from a few raw ingredients (no cooking involved), and that little sauce could bring dramatic — even cheffy — dazzle to the simplest of plates? 

Ah, but you do now! Cutting to the chase, and getting straight to the recipe: Tangy Green Everything Sauce.

I wanted a raw sauce that was fresh and packed with herbs — like an Argentine chimichurri or a Sicilian salmoriglio — but decidedly tangier than either of those, definitely with lots of shallots, and focused on herbs that are softer than assertive oregano. Parsley, dill and mint harmonize beautifully — and if your’e in the mood to change things up, you can layer in tarragon, chervil, cilantro or basil. Or even oregano, if that’s how you’re feeling! (I sometimes do.)

Tangy Green Everything Sauce was born. “Everything” is its middle name because it goes with nearly everything. A seared pork chop, butterflied leg of lamb, supermarket rotisserie chicken, simple grilled fish  — any and all are transformed into something vivacious and delightful when they keep company with this sauce. Keep a jar of it in the fridge, and it takes the stress away from dinner. It doesn’t matter so much what exactly you throw in the pan; just grab what looks good, cook it simply with salt and pepper, and then pass around the Tangy Green Everything Sauce. 

Crispy-Skinned Striped Bass with Tangy Green Everything Sauce

We could just leave it at that — but then the people who complain about recipes that are weighed down by pesky stories would have prevailed. 

Instead, let’s parse chimichurri, since it is the honored great uncle of Tangy Green Everything Sauce. What defines chimichurri exactly, what are its origins, and when did it make its way to the U.S. and into our consciousness? 

We know it’s from Argentina, that it’s a raw sauce of chopped parsley, fresh oregano, garlic, vinegar and oil. In Uruguay, where it’s also enjoyed, dried chiles make an appearance as well.

I can’t remember the first time I saw chimichurri or heard of it — and I’ve been unable to turn up much about the sauce, either among the food reference books on my shelves, or on the web. 

(Hopefully there are chimichurri scholars out there somewhere who will jump in and shine a light on it in the comments section!)

I couldn’t find it indexed in Maricel E. Precilla’s Gran Cocina Latina: The Food of Latin America. There’s no entry for it in the encyclopedic Oxford Companion to Food (at least in the original 1999 edition; I just ordered the 2014 revised edition; will update if it’s there.) No mention in James Peterson’s Sauces, nor in Time-Life’s The Good Cook Sauces. Samin Nosrat doesn’t doesn’t include it in her discussion of vinegar-based sauces, or anywhere else I could find, in Salt Fat Acid Heat. J. Kenji López-Alt has a version in The Food Lab (lots of garlic, no shallots, and cilantro included with the parsley and oregano) — but not a word about what it is, where it’s from or its cultural provenance.

Isn’t this strange — such a ubiquitous sauce, yet so little coverage?

New York magazine published a chimichurri recipe back in 2009 that feels authoritative, from Francis Mallman, one of Argentina’s most famous chefs. Adapted from  his cookbook Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way (which I could have sworn I owned a copy of — can’t find it). It’s extremely garlicky; the recipe uses the whole head, garlic (no shallot), albeit blanched to take off the edge. Parsley and oregano are in there as well (not cilantro), with an olive oil to red wine vinegar ratio of two to one. But no history to go with it.

Joyce Goldstein gave us “The mysterious origins of chimichurri” in a San Francisco Chronicle story in 2012. “One story says it is a corruption of English words, most commonly the name Jimmy Curry or Jimmy McCurry, supposedly a meat wholesaler,” she wrote. She then cited Miguel Brascó, an “Argentine gourmet” who traced it to the failed British invasions of Argentina in 1806 and 1807, when the prisoners asked for “condiments for their food.” Another story points to Basque settlers in Argentina, also in the 19th century, who used the word tximitxurri, which loosely translates as "a mixture of several things in no particular order."

Finally, Goldstein cited a San Francisco chef, Staffan Terje, who noted that chimichurri is “practically identical” to Sicilian salmoriglio. We know there was significant immigration of Italians to Argentina in the 18th century. A Wikipedia article outlines some of the foods they brought with them, but makes no mention of salmoriglio.

The earliest mention in Anglophone print I turned up was 1998, when the New York Times’ then-restaurant critic Ruth Reichl published a “Diner’s Journal” piece about a just-opened restaurant on Ninth Avenue called Chimichurri Grill. After praising the place’s Patagonian toothfish, Reichl wrote, “But what Argentina is mostly known for is beef. It is well represented on the menu here and tastes particularly good with chimichurri sauce, a mixture of parsley, garlic, oil and vinegar that is the country's national condiment.”

That must be about the time chimichurri started to gain popularity in the U.S. 

How long did it take to really take off? Hard to say. But just two years ago, in 2019, Nation’s Restaurant News announced that “The Latin American condiment is trending in the U.S.” Over the previous four years, the trade magazine reported an 83% increase in appearances on menus nationwide.

So yeah, it’s everywhere. And it’s delicious. Would you prefer chimichurri, or its fresh-faced new relative, Tangy Green Everything Sauce?

In my world, there’s room for both — and both will be appearing on my table again and again through grilling season.

Oh, you want that recipe, too? Bravo! You’re rewarded for reading to the end.

RECIPE: Chimichurri

RECIPE: Tangy Green Everything Sauce

RECIPE: Crispy-Skinned Striped Bass with Tangy Green Everything Sauce

A love letter to vospov kofte: How my mother and I quashed our beef and swapped it with lentils

By Varty Yahjian

My mother and I see eye to eye on exactly three things: inappropriate humor, dangly earrings and eating with our hands. (Vehement approval!) Oh, and we both sleep in on the weekends and cancel plans before noon.

Aside from these, it’s hard to find common ground between us, and we widen that distance in the kitchen. There, we disagree about it all. She doesn’t salt food while it cooks, while I think it’s a mistake to wait till the end; I like caramelizing onions, while she thinks it's a waste of time.

We do, however, have a common food heritage, one that spans the 36 years between us: We both grew up eating food native to the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. 

Our family tree is ethnically Armenian, but for the three generations preceding me, we have had Bulgarian nationality. In the early twentieth century, my paternal great-grandparents escaped ethnic cleansing in Anatolia and settled in Sofia, Bulgaria — where my father was born, and where my parents would eventually meet in the 1970s. My mother’s great-great-grandparents left Anatolia for the same reason even earlier, sticking to the Black Sea’s coast following their voyages as refugees. 

The result of these migrations is our family’s tradition, a fabulous mix of Armenian, Bulgarian, and now with me, American sensibilities. 

Gayane (left) and Varty Yahjian, making vospov kofte / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

As with most immigrant families, my mother is the sovereign of the stove. To her it’s an indisputable reign, making for a tumultuous dinnertime environment because over the years, I’ve relied less on her recipes as I create my own. For instance, I use stewed tomatoes and a lot of dill in our flu-season chicken soup in lieu of her usual celery and bell peppers. Like a true monarch, she loathes these types of rebellions, vexedly announcing “I’m sorry, but no, this is not how you do it!” before storming off. 

When we were all younger, my mother fed the whole family, of course. I don’t know how she did it, because after working a ten-hour workday and pulling dinner together, she had to deal with my ruthlessly picky palate.  

Until I was in middle school, I rarely ate anything that wasn’t potatoes, rice or macaroni. Mushrooms were smelly and pretended to be meat; buckwheat tasted like aluminum foil (yes, I said that exactly); and romaine lettuce, my final boss of hated foods, was unbearably bitter. 

Regardless of protest, my mom always made sure my plate left the table clean; if not, “mekhké” — it’s a shame, as she would say — because those last few bites were my good luck charms.

Thankfully my tastebuds evolved in tweendom. Perhaps it was the feeling of unsupervised freedom after being dropped off at the mall that led me towards the food court’s salmon nigiri and fried chicken with waffles. 

Or maybe my budding womanhood began to recognize how incredible it was that my mother managed to feed us every single night. I owed it to her to honor her food, especially because at this point, she was also working on the weekends. Looking back, I see that my mother’s cooking was a love-language, and I understand now why she’d get so upset when I brought back full Tupperwares of food from school.

But part of my coming around could also just be that at some point, I saw how unbelievably lame it was to be so stubborn about food. 

Photo by Varty Yahjian

In seventh grade I started watching Food Network, and my mother took note. Encouraging my growing curiosity, she bought me a copy of Cooking Rocks!: Rachael Ray 30-Minute Meals for Kids, and in her typical compliment-and-command delivery, inscribed on the first page “To my cute Varty to cook some meals!” 

And cook some meals I did, starting with Ray’s Tomato, Basil and Cheese Baked Pasta recipe, which I’ve since memorized and still make, with some grown-up additions. My parents loved it, and I was immediately validated — a powerful feeling for anyone, and especially a Green Day-listening, greasy-haired thirteen-year-old.

In high school, armed with my new driver's license in our family's Volvo wagon, I began tearing through Los Angeles' incredible culinary jungle — thrilled by the star anise and coriander at our local pho shop and tacos de lengua in Cypress Park. 

At home, I started carefully watching my mother because those smells of toasted butter, tomato sauce, and allspice had begun to signal more than just “dinner’s ready.” They were re-introducing me to flavors of my heritage — a connection to my great-grandparents I now feel so grateful for. 

I slowly learned the basics of our household standards: pilaf with vermicelli noodles, Bulgarian meatball soup, moussaka and dolma. I mostly observed and tried not to intervene because the few times I did, I slowed my mom down and got in the way. I watched how she used her hands to scoop roughly chopped onions into a pool of olive oil with a slice of butter for taste, and then liberally season them with paprika and chubritsa, a dried herb essential to the Bulgarian kitchen. 

Fast-forward to 2021, and we’re back in the same kitchen. My mother and I don’t really cook together; typically it’s only one of us preparing dinner for the family at a time. 

Varty (left) and Gayane Yahjian / Photo courtesy of Varty Yahjian

Except this time we’ve decided to collaborate — on a popular Western Armenian dish, vospov kofte, lentil “meatballs.”  

Vospov in Armenian translates to “with lentil” and kofte, or “meatball,” is spelled in Turkish. Neither word necessarily explains where the dish originates from. Lest we forget, the majority of the Middle East and all of Anatolia — where my great-grandparents are from — were under Ottoman rule for centuries. Present-day Armenia and Turkey share a border, and given their history, attributing food to either one is fertile ground for an argument in the comments section.

Typically the dish is served as part of the cold mezze on Western Armenian dining tables. It’s popular during Lent, when animal products are shunned in observation of Jesus Christ’s forty days resisting the devil’s temptation. As such, Armenian Lenters have gotten pretty creative over the last two thousand years in reworking dishes to meet the orthodoxy’s expectations. Vospov kofte is one of these remixes, where beef or lamb is swapped with red lentils and bulgur to make for a lighter, all-vegan version that pleases God and mortals alike. It’s so delicious that in our family, we enjoy it year-round.  

Given our foundational cooking disagreements, the idea of my mom and I preparing these vospov koftes together is a big deal. 

We begin by bickering over which saucepan to use, a common pre-cooking ritual for us. I prefer to use a smaller pot, but my mother insists (and I’ll now admit rightfully so) that we’ll need the larger one to contain the lava-like bubbles red lentils make when they simmer into a thick paste.

After enough shuffling around one another in near-silence, the tension finally breaks as we laugh about how the measuring cup could have disappeared into thin air. 

We measure out and soak bulgur, which will get stirred into the thick lentil paste along with parsley, spices, scallions and sautéed onions, discuss the supremacy of Italian parsley over curly-leaf as we chop, and compare the ways we’ve failed at trying to cut onions without crying. We learn that neither of us is the timer-setting type, and our bulgur probably spends a bit too long soaking. Not a big deal, though.

We hand-knead everything together with great conviction, and slowly it turns into an aromatic paste, sticking to our fingers. After scraping as much of it off our palms into the bowl as we can, we set aside a little bowl of water, dip our fingers in, and start shaping the kofte into its characteristic, ovalesque shape, lengthened on the ends and slightly flattened in the middle. We arrange our koftes in a neat wreath, decorate it with more chopped parsley, and then finally face the truth: It is extremely rare to find us in the kitchen together. Why is that?

“Because you always tell me what to do for no reason,” I say with a touch of shade.

Vospov kofte / Photograph by Varty Yahjian

My mom pauses, and for a millisecond drops eye contact before returning with the smile of someone who’s seen me spit out celery and start fights over cilantro: “You have a great taste, and everything you make is very yummy. Let’s cook together more.” 

And because she wouldn’t be my mother without giving me a task, she hugs me and says, “Just you need to do clean-up after you cook.” 

I’ll heed her words, because she’s right: The countertop is a cacophony of utensils, parsley stems and spilled cumin. But for once, this mother and daughter are totally, deliciously, in sync. 

Varty Yahjian lives, works and cooks in La Cañada, California. This is her first story for Cooks Without Borders. 

Need a perfect, easy holiday side dish? Try my family's longtime favorite roasted potatoes

If you’re anything like me, you’re likely to forget something as you plan your special holiday meals, or leave one thing to the last minute to strategize.

If for you that means spuds (during this weirdest-ever pre-holiday moment!), we’ve got just the thing: my family’s roasted potatoes.

The dish couldn’t be simpler, really, and it’s not much of a recipe. Think of it as a method. I usually use Yukon Golds or similar potatoes, but I’ve also used red ones. Most often I use medium-size Yukon Golds.

Here’s what you do: Peel and quarter the the potatoes lengthwise, drop them in a baking dish with a yellow onion peeled and cut into eighths. Drizzle with a couple of glugs of olive oil, liberate the leaves from four or five thyme branches, sprinkle liberally with salt and freshly ground pepper. Pop the dish in a hot oven, stirring once or twice with a wooded spoon to make sure they don’t stick, and roast for 45 to 55 minutes, until they’re crispy-edged and golden brown. Swap in other herbs, such as rosemary or oregano, if you don’t feel like thyme, add garlic cloves if you like, or swap the onions for shallots.

That’s it. I usually keep a big jar of grey sea salt from France in the pantry; I love using it with potatoes done this way. (But any salt will do.)

The potatoes are great with all kinds of rich holiday foods — prime rib, tenderloin and other roast beefs, turkey, ham, duck, goose and so on.

Best of all, they’re easy.

Oh, if you’re wondering about the platter they’re sitting on, it was an early work by my friend the ceramist Christopher Russell. He has since become a big deal artist who shows in galleries and whose work is highly sought-after. (I’m a huger fan than ever; check out his website.)

Back to those potatoes. They’re not just handy for holidays; they’re also brilliant with roast chicken or leg of lamb. Here you go:

RECIPE: The Brenner Family’s Roasted Potatoes

Happy holidays from Cooks Without Borders to you and yours!

All the harvest-box greens: How to make the most of kale, chard, collards and the like

Harvest boxes of greens and herbs from La Bajada POP Farm, part of Promise of Peace Gardens, a Dallas-based nonprofit.

Whether it’s from your own garden, the community garden where you’ve been working a plot, the farmers market — or you’ve picked up or ordered a harvest box from a local farm — you suddenly find yourself with armfuls of greens.

I love greens any way I can get them; this time of year and through the winter, I actively crave them. I especially love mustard greens, for their wonderful spiciness, but kale, chard, collards and spinach are wonderful too — and I love to mix them up.

What to do with them?

Sure, you can drop the leaves in a salad. For that, the youngest leaves are best — especially spinach and tangy beet greens. For tougher customers, like kale, a little pre-salad-bowl massage does wonders for mature leaves. Stack them, roll up and slice into chiffonade, then give those ribbons a squeeze before you dress them.

This time of year, soup is front-of-mind. You could make an earthy, vegan, soul-sustaining, feed-you-all-week soup based on lentils, onions, carrot and celery, punctuated by spices and rounded out by all those greens — thrown in at the last minute for maximum flavor and texture.

Here’s a master recipe.

And then there is saag paneer. Did you think the Indian braised greens-and-cheese dish was meant only to include spinach? Actually, in India saag refers to any kinds of greens, as Maneet Chauhan explains in her new cookbook, Chaat. (Read our story about it.) Her version of the classic dish includes kale and arugula along with spinach, but in her headnote she urges inclusion of any greens you’ve got.

Or you could shine a bright spotlight on the greens themselves, making a simple sauté that puts them center stage and celebrates their individual flavors.

During The Great Confinement, Wylie has fashioned himself into the greens specialist of our household. As long as chard (his favorite) is involved, it’s his mission to preside over them and add whatever else looks great. The stems, he feels, are all important. “You’re wasting if you don’t use them,” he says. “That’s not cool. They add texture and emphasize the character of each green. Especially chard.” He slices them into what looks like a small dice, and advocates sautéeing those stems with “some kind of allium,” which for him always includes shallots.

The sautéed stems also give the finished dish a confetti-on-top kind of beauty.

Last week, we purchased a harvest box from a wonderful nonprofit educational farm where we live in Dallas – Promise of Peace Gardens — and we found ourselves in possession of a wealth of gorgeous organic greens: two kinds of kale, rainbow chard and daikon greens.

Kale from our POP Gardens harvest box, with more greens in the background

I convinced Wylie to slow down enough to show me exactly how he achieves his greens greatness.

It starts with sweating shallots in olive oil, then adding garlic, then the toughest sliced stems, then the more tender stems, and then the greens — beginning with the sturdiest (kale and collards, for instance). You add them, and cook till wilted enough to make room for the next batch. Then come the more tender — chard, mustard and/or turnip. And finally the most tender – young arugula, spinach and whatnot. After that, he adds a little chicken broth (vegetable broth or water work fine, too, and keep it vegan), to loosen up the the mix and let it breathe. Finally, off-heat, a dash of vinegar.

They’re super delicious on those evenings when a pot of beans and some brown rice or roasted sweet potatoes feel like healthy luxuries. For omnivores, they’re the perfect minerally counterpoint to something like saucy pork chops, or any kind of roasted or braised meat or poultry. (Duck!)

There you go. If you’ve been hesitating to subscribe to a local farm-box program for fear you’d be awash in stuff you couldn’t use, you have your braising orders.

RECIPE: Sunday Souper Soup

RECIPE: Maneet Chauhan’s Saag Paneer

RECIPE: Wylie’s Greens